Wednesday, October 10, 2018

THIS WAS THE DAY NIKKI HALEY BECAME PRESIDENT

This was the lead item on the Washington Post website when I woke up. The evidence offered to support the thesis that Haley threatens Trump even if she's not running against him is ... thin.

“No, I’m not running for 2020,” she said, seated next to the president in the Oval Office. “I can promise you what I’ll be doing is campaigning for this one. So, I look forward to supporting the president in the next election.”

The blunt statement underscores both the loyalty demanded by Trump and the political complications Haley could pose to the president....

“She’s a rising star and he’s king, so there’s always an inherent tension there,” said Mike Murphy, a longtime Republican strategist and Trump critic. “Politically, any star in the party is a threat to Trump because in his Stalinesque way, there’s only one sun god and it has to be Trump.”

That's it -- one quote from one #NeverTrump Republican, who says Haley threatens Trump because in theory a person in Haley's position threatens Trump. Stop the presses! This is our lead story!

This isn't the only example of pro-Haley gush from the allegedly liberal media. Why were so many reporters speculating yesterday that Haley's resignation might have been a protest against the smashmouth campaign to confirm Brett Kavanaugh? Rachel Maddow floated this theory at the top of her broadcast last night, as did quite a few other journalists:

The timing of The resignation if Haley, considered the most respected woman in Trump’s administration, just after Kavanaugh. Notable.

This is what I say over and over again: The so-called liberal media is more entranced by the possibility that we'll be led out of the Trump wilderness by a principled right-centrist (not that Haley actually is a right-centrist) than by the notion that the post-Trump era will be liberal and Democratic. None of the likely 2020 Democratic presidential candidates excite the media the way Haley, Jeff Flake, and John Kasich do. And Haley isn't even a #NeverTrumper.

I said yesterday that I think she might take Lindsey Graham's Senate seat if he's chosen for Trump's Cabinet, but that seems less likely to me now. Haley's resignation letter notes that she's "been in public office for fourteen straight years" and believes that "returning from government to the private sector is not a step down but a step up" -- a likely allusion to the fact that she's carrying a lot of credit card and mortgage debt and would probably like to make some serious private-sector money before returning to politics. (She might be leaving partly in response to an ethics complaint noting that she's taken several flights on private jets owned by businessmen she knows, but more likely those businessmen have stepped up their recruitment of her lately, and a lucrative arrangement was recently finalized.)

Haley doesn't want to be our 2020 anti-Trump savior and she wouldn't be much of a savior if she did want that. But that hasn't stopped the media from dreaming.